Love Letters
by Just Abi
Summary: Not everyone says, "I love you" with hearts and flowers. A story told in letters from Draco to Harry. HPDM
1. Chapter One

**Disclaimer**: Clearly does not belong to me. No infringement intended.

**Summary**: Not everyone says, "I love you" with hearts and flowers. Sometimes it sounds a lot more like, "I hate you." A story told in letters from Draco to Harry.

**Rated**: R for content in later chapters.

o**O**o

**I** hate you. I hate the way your hair falls across your face. I hate the way you walk like your hips are made of something slippery, no crisp clean economy of motion like a decent human being, just filthy waves of sex rolling off them every time you move. It's disgusting, putting yourself on display like that so everyone can see exactly what it would be like to fuck you just by watching you walk down the hallways. Do you want every sex addled cretin in the school attacking you?

Of course you don't care. You never care about anything.

You don't care that you numb my brain, make me clumsy and awkward, make me lose track of what people are saying to me. It's some secret plan to make everyone think I am an incompetent fool. I hate the way you stare back at me while you talk to your friends like you're talking to me all the way across the room. Do you think I can't feel your eyes on me? How am I supposed to concentrate when you look at me like that, like you've lost the ability to blink, eyes dilated 'til they look black with just that tease of green around the edges?

And what business do you have being beautiful? You were never beautiful before. You were skinny and short and your hair looked like you cut it yourself in the dark and your clothes never fit and it was easy to tease you because I was better than you and I knew it. Now you are taller than me and I hate it. I hate looking up into your perfect face and watching you suck your lip into your mouth and bite it until it's chapped and mangled. Your lips would be rough under my tongue, not smooth silk like a girl.

I hate the way you tell me you love me when we are alone and stand too close and touch my face and make my heart race so fast I feel like I am dying, then act like you don't even know me when other people are around. Not that I would willingly speak to you in public. I couldn't if I wanted to. I'd probably vomit or fall down from sweat-slippery feet and hands. You make me dizzy and nauseous and angry and empty and I don't need this right now.

So just fuck off. Take your love and shove it up your goddamned perfect arse. Shave your head so the ebony of your unbrushed hair can't hurt innocent bystanders. Gouge out your eyes so they can't follow me every where I go. Cover your skin in grease and dirt so the milk white can't blind me. Scream every night until your voice is hoarse so in the morning I can't hear the sounds that lick at parts of me no one but me has ever touched. Take a cold shower so I can't feel the heat of your body across the room, or better yet, bathe in ice.

Stop crying to your friends about how cruel I am, how I hurt you, how I break your heart with my indifference. They already think I am Voldemort's minion. Do you imagine they could loathe me, or pity you any more than they have always from the beginning? You said you love me. This is who I am. You don't have to fuck my friends or turn them against me to hurt me, shatter me the way you tell everyone who will listen that I have shattered you. All you have to do is breathe, exist, love me, and I break into a thousand pieces. I will never find all of me again.

Are you happy?

o**O**o

**W**hat the fuck is wrong with you? You wanted to know how I feel about you and I told you. You pushed me, and pushed me, and you wouldn't let it go. So now you won't even speak to me? What did you want me to say? That I love you and I want to skip down the halls holding hands and braid each other's hair? I'm not one of your damn goody-goody, touchy feely friends like the Weasel and the Mudblood.

Have you even met me? Did you think that just because I let you stick your tongue down my throat just to get you to shut up for ten seconds I would suddenly turn into a completely different person? If you wanted someone who would fall all over you and treat you like a god, you should have tried that shit with C-c-c-reevey. If my father sees that picture you won't have to worry about giving me the silent treatment any more because I'll be buried behind Malfoy Manor where I can finally get some peace.

o**O**o

**C**an't you just yell at me or something? Tell me you hate me. Tell me all your friends were right when they told you my heart was made of ice and I'd never be good for anything but causing suffering. Cry. Scream. Hex me. Curse me. Hit me. Something. I haven't heard your voice in weeks. How am I supposed to live like this? How can you just stare at me with that, that hollow, defeated look in your eyes and never say a word? When was the last time you said anything to anyone?

Are you trying to hurt me? Well, it's working. I feel like someone ripped my heart out of my chest and left the empty space exposed. I'd cut it out myself and send it to you wrapped in silver paper in exchange for the chance to hear you whisper a single word. I'd stand still while you gave me a plague of boils simply to hear you say the curse. Please. Hate me 'til the day you die, only hate me out loud.

Or simply forget about me. I'm a stupid wanker. I'm not worth it. Just turn your eyes off when they trip over me like I'm wrapped in your cloak, invisible, or not even there. If you want to cause me the most pain I can imagine, do that, and be happy without me and make me watch you move on to someone better than me.

It was only a kiss.


	2. Chapter Two

**N**o, this absolutely is not happening. Snap out of it. Eat something. Throw a tantrum. Get on your bloody broom and catch the snitch like a good little boy. Sneak out after hours and get caught in the Restricted Section. Act like the prat they expect you to be so this won't happen. I will do anything you want if you make this not happen. Anything.

Snape, _Snape_, pulled me aside and asked me what's wrong with you. As if I had some power to make you care about anything. That somehow the weeks of begging you to speak to me, look at me, react in any way were somehow shirking my duty to shore up the morale of the Saviour of the Wizarding World. What am I supposed to do, take off my clothes and flop up and down on your body until you come back to reality like I'm some kind of prostitute? You are not my job, you never were, and you certainly aren't now.

I am _not_ going to a meeting with you in Dumbledor's office to discuss your behaviour. I just, I can't do it. I won't. I can't believe you would humiliate me like this. He owled my father, you self-centred little twit. Lucius bloody Malfoy summoned to school to discuss the Boy Who Lived's mental health like he cares if you waste away and die from starving yourself. Do you hate me that much?

I will _never_ forgive you for this.

o**O**o

**I** can't believe you put me through that. Have I degraded myself enough for you today, or do you need more? What would make the shining Prince Potter happy? A bed time story, perhaps?

Do you want to hear about my conversation with my father after you left? How he is so proud of me, not for the fact that I've managed to beat Granger in marks or finally defeat you at Quiddich, because, really Draco, it's not much of an accomplishment if he doesn't even try, is it, now? No, my father is proud of me for breaking your spirit.

All I've wanted since I was eleven years old was to beat you and make my father proud. And he is. I should be happy. I should be ecstatic. I should be throwing a party right now. But what am I doing? Sitting in Snape's office writing you a letter.

Why aren't I happy, you ask? Is it because I care about your pathetic excuse of an existence? Do I feel remorse? No. I wouldn't waste an ounce of pity on you. I'm not happy because I didn't do it. It isn't my victory. I'm not the reason you've been walking around like a zombie for weeks, but you let them think it was all about me anyway.

You never loved me. If you loved me, you'd tell them their expectations and adulation and constant need to watch every little thing you do has gotten the better of you. You'd tell them I didn't do anything to you. But no, you can't just tell them you aren't their perfect Golden Boy, capable of taking on the weight of the world every moment since you found out who you were. You couldn't just be bitter for having your childhood stolen.

No, you indulged yourself in depression, let yourself slip away, and let them blame it all on me. Your love is a burden I never asked for, and everyone thinks it's mine to bear, expects me to pull the weight, but I can't because none of it is real. You just let me go around throwing myself at your mercy, humiliating myself, killing myself over a pretty lie to hide your dirty secret.

You have them all fooled, but you can't fool me. I know you too well. I've watched you since we were children. I know everything about you and I know you don't love me. I know you don't love me because I love you, and I'd never let anything like this happen to you. I'd protect you from anything if I could. And that's why I won't tell.

I'll let them go on blaming me for everything that's wrong with you, even though it's their fault, because it would break you to tell them the truth. I'll be the villain for you, so you can be the tragic hero. They can hate me all they want, they can punish me and I won't complain, because there's nothing they could ever do to hurt me more than you've already done.

But when you finally get tired of playing the victim, and get back to saving the world and all the other rubbish they've made you think you have to do, remember that I loved you, and you broke me for it.


	3. Chapter Three

**Love Letters are all from Draco Malfoy.**

o**O**o

**S**o you're back from the dead and your friends get all the credit. And why not? They were there for you while I was alone in my bed trying to avoid being hexed every ten seconds for hurting the Boy Who Lived and all that. And the howlers were no picnic, either. But I kept my mouth shut and that should count for something, right?

Do you think you ever might really love me? Merlin, I've been spending too much time alone. Draco Malfoy, lonely enough to day dream about Witch Weekly's favourite wizard. Pining over a pinup. Ridiculous.

I know one of your secrets, so it's only fair that I tell you one of mine. I've been lonely my whole life. No one around me ever looked at me the way you did, like I was worth something besides my name, beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with my hair or my skin. You told me I looked like an angel, and it wasn't creepy like all the times my father's friends said it.

So now you know my secret, too. I miss you. And now you're back and you look at me across the room, sometimes, just like you used to and for a minute I feel like the only person in the world, and it isn't lonely at all.

o**O**o

**I**'m a coward and I always have been. Self preservation is one of my most valuable skills. I'm a Slytherin! You've known me forever; you should have known that I'm no bloody Gryffindor brave in the face of fear. But it wasn't just fear, it was terror, and I had to. I couldn't just stay there like that and then you said I could go if I wanted to, and I'm sorry I ran, but I had to get away.

A good thing I ran, too, because I spent the next hour puking in the bathroom like I'd taken one of those disgusting Skiving Snackboxes, listening to the most annoying ghost I've ever met. She was worse than Peeves. And my hair was all stringy and my face was all red and blotchy and I was sweating from everywhere and there were boogies running down my face and my eyes were watering so hard I couldn't see. I was repulsive.

I tried to be brave, be like you, but it just isn't in my nature and I panicked. I thought it would be alright, there were all those other people around and you were smiling and laughing, even and for a minute I was happy. And then the bell rang and everyone went off to class and then we were alone in the staircase and I haven't been alone with you in so long. Granger and Weasly are always flanking you and it's not like we were ever friends, not really.

You can't just go from laughing and smiling to looking at people like that. I wasn't ready and you looked like you were going to devour me and then you were standing so close and I thought you were going to kiss me again and I remembered what it was like to have your whole body pressed up against me and then everything was throbbing and I was dizzy and I thought, if I just held my breath and closed my eyes it would be okay.

But you wouldn't let me close my eyes and then you brushed up against me and I flinched. I didn't mean to do it, but I've never felt anything so hard in my life. I know you could see it in my eyes, like a frightened animal trapped in a corner.

Why do you have to be so bloody noble all the time! If you had just kissed me it would have passed and everything would be okay, and you wouldn't hate me now. Again.

o**O**o

**I** know I should hate you right now. I should be planning your untimely death with glee bordering on psychosis, but I'm too tired. I should be bubbling over with rage and shame and humiliation but all I feel is this sick numbness. I'm cold and tired and all I want to do is sleep, but when I dream I dream I'm drowning.

You let me hear it from Hermione, Granger, the Mudblood, whatever. She's not even my friend, she hates me, and even still she feels bad enough about it to come crying to me begging for forgiveness, or penance or something. Like she has betrayed me and couldn't tolerate that, even if it is a prat like me who doesn't deserve it.

She told me everything. That it was her that kissed you. That you kissed her back. That you kissed for hours. She told me that she knew I had run when you tried to kiss me. Didn't say that you told her, but no one else knew, so her loyalty made little difference.

I asked her what it felt like, because I can't remember. She told me. It wasn't enough, but she's a clever witch, that one, and she found a way to give it all to me. A nasty little charm. I should never have taken it, but I did, and now I know.

I'll never be able to make you happy, but she's just what you need. She loves you, and she's your friend and she'll make you feel better and never run away from you or let you down. Besides, she's suitable. No one could possibly object to her, not even me.


	4. Chapter Four

o**O**o

**I** didn't want to know this, what it feels like when you touch her. I want to cut the knowledge out of my brain with an athame so sharp it won't even bleed at first. But all I can do is lay here on my bed with the tiny ball she charmed for me in my fist while I feel your mouth on hers, your fingers on her skin.

The hurt in my chest is a dull ache I can almost ignore most of the time, but when you touch her it flares into a throb to match the one in my cock. I can't stop either pain; all I can do is wait it out, feeling your body bearing down on hers just as if you were here, lying on top of me and biting my throat and grinding yourself against me and not her at all.

I have to hide in here with the curtains closed when you're with her. I can't stand the brush of my robes against my skin with all the sensations coming from her, it's too confusing and too much and so I'm lying in the dark, naked and moaning while tears stream down my face.

I can't touch myself anymore. It doesn't make it stop, not until it stops for her, and anyway I don't need to touch myself for it to happen anymore, either. I can just lay here and feel you kissing me, touching me, making desperate sounds in my ear and sliding in and out of me until I want to cry out with the intensity of it.

Just as long as I keep my eyes shut and forget that I'm really alone.

o**O**o

**D**o you know who just sat down next to me and put his arm around me to console me? Ronald Fucking Weasley. The Weasel feels sorry for me and it's all your bloody fault. I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me, but I really don't want Weasley comforting me in "my time of need." I don't believe this is really happening.

I told everyone I was fine! I don't know what else to do. I haven't picked a fight. I haven't been crying in the girls'toilet with that insufferable Myrtle. I haven't done anything to deserve this.

Snape is the only one in the whole school being decent about all this. He asked me if I was okay and I said yes and that was it. That's how it's supposed to be. I don't need all this concern. I liked it better when I was Voldemort, Jr. and everyone wanted to hex me into oblivion. You can hide from that.

How do you hide from people who you barely know, or worse, that you hate, touching you and telling you that if you need anything they're there for you! Touching me, Potter! Hugging me! I do not want this. I do not want to be pitied. I am not pitiful, I am not hurt, I am fine and the next person who suggests otherwise is going to the hospital wing.

You are meant to be the tragic hero, carrying on in the face of adversity and I am meant to be the villain. This is all wrong. Ron practically hexed you in the hallway! If I hadn't stopped him you would have spent the night with Madame Pomfrey instead of the lovely Miss Granger.

Besides, I'm not some simpering victim on the side of right here. I told her to stay with you. I told her to make you happy, and she's buggering it all up. If you were happy, you wouldn't be looking at me like that from your table at dinner while she sits in your lap feeding you like an infant. If you were happy, you wouldn't look as broken as I feel. If you were happy, I wouldn't feel your tears on her skin at night.

But I suppose she's gotten what's coming to her. Hogwarts' own Jezebel. I think they hate her more than they ever hated me, because they want to hate you, too, but can't. So she gets it all. I tell her it isn't true, that she is the right one for you and everything will be fine, but she doesn't believe me.

Ron hates her now, even more than he hates you. He was in love with her, you know. He was in love with her and you knew it and you took her anyway. And now he has more in common with a pureblood prat like me than either of you. He needs me to hate you both, and I can't, but he needs me to be angry so he can be angry on my behalf.

But I'm not angry. And I don't want to lose whatever small part of you the talented Jezebel has left me with.

o**O**o

**H**arry, you have to believe that I didn't want this. I never, but my father, and well, it's not like I had a choice! But it doesn't mean anything. I still, that is to say, I've always…I'd never hurt you, not on purpose, and I know that I have, but I'd take it back if I could because I…

It doesn't matter now. You'll never look at me again once you see it, and I can't live with seeing betrayal in your eyes. I just wish… I wish I could tell you and you'd understand, but it's been too long since I could've said anything to you to start with this.

I…


	5. Chapter Five

**Chapter Five**

o**O**o

**I** can't believe I was gone for a week, a week while my father and Voldemort and all the rest held me down while I screamed and they branded that thing into my arm and all I wanted was to see you and tell you I loved you and make you understand, make you forgive me, AND YOU NEVER EVEN NOTICED I WAS GONE! Is the mudblood's cunt that good? Even the Weasel noticed, and he hates me.

But you, you said you loved me with your lips and your eyes and even after you started fucking your best friend's girl you still looked at me like I was the only one there. And then I wasn't there and you didn't even know. How could you not know? How could you just forget about me like that? How could I have been so stupid?

My father was right.

o**O**o

**D**o you remember when you kissed me? I'd been in Snape's room the night before doing something, I don't remember what, but then someone knocked at the door and it was Professor Sinestra and she said, "Hey, Sexy," before she realized it was me and not Snape and then, thank Merlin, she had the presence of mind to close her bloody robes and run off, and we had such a laugh?

Well, I was laughing, anyway, when I found you. And then I said, "Hey, Sexy," to you, to share the joke, because really, it was the funniest thing I'd ever seen. I'd never seen anyone go so still so fast without someone saying Petrificus Totalus first. I couldn't figure out why you weren't laughing, and then I realized I hadn't told you about Sinestra in her knickers at Snape's door. But then even when I did tell you, you still weren't laughing.

All you said was that you wished it had been real, that I'd meant to say something like that to you. I didn't know what to say, so I brushed it off, and made a joke of it. You did laugh then, but your eyes looked…off, not like they usually did when you laughed. And then I tickled you and you really did laugh and we were happy, weren't we?

I don't know why I said it, maybe I wanted some of that back from the night before, maybe I just wanted an excuse to say it to you because no matter how much I wanted to, I could never leave myself that open to rejection otherwise. But whatever my reason, I said it again, in the hall outside Flitwick's classroom in front of everyone. I thought you would share a smile with me over the image of Sinestra and Snape, or if I was lucky, really lucky, you would burst out laughing at our private joke.

But you didn't do either of those things. You just stopped in your tracks, turned around and pressed me into the wall. Every part of you was touching me and the only thing holding me up was the stone at my back. And then you kissed me and I forgot how to breathe. It might have been a split second or an hour later, but the bell rang and you had to go.

You were so happy. You ran down the hall like a little boy and you crowed at the top of your lunges and you looked like you might fly. If you had looked back you would have seen me fall. I couldn't even walk. Pansy had to drag me into the classroom. I was so out of it I let her braid my hair. She braided my hair, Potter! She reminds me of it. Constantly.

And I thought it was worth it. But I was wrong.

o**O**o

**I**magine my surprise when Granger dragged me into an empty classroom by the front of my robes to tell me she's breaking up with you tonight in your cosy little common room. Seems I got off easy, not even she can stand your constant whinging. I don't know why she elected to fill me in on her little plan to cut you off before she told you, but I've never really bothered trying to figure her out before and I'm certainly not going to start now.

Not being one to miss what promises to be an event spectacularly humiliating for you, I have persuaded Ron to sneak me into Griffindor tonight so that I can witness it for myself in exchange for fire whiskey to console you with. Actually, as he's quite excited to see her drop you, too, he wasn't terribly hard to convince. He was drooling all over himself at the prospect. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen him quite so pleased, not even when he won the Quiddich Cup last year, and that was just disgusting.

I wonder if you will cry when she tells you it's over. Will you use this as another pathetic excuse to drown in your weakness and get all depressed again like you did to me? Will you roam the halls like a ghost again for months? Will you stop eating and speaking until Dumbledore calls her muggle parents in for a chat about how their clever daughter has broken his Golden Boy?

I know why she's doing it, you know. She didn't even have to tell me, I could see it in her eyes. She can't stand your whinging anymore, or your blubbering ever time you come. Can't say that I blame her, actually. Not very flattering to listen to someone cry every time they take you to bed, is it? And apparently even mudbloods have enough pride not to put up with that sort of behaviour after a certain point.

o**O**o

**A/N:** I'm not clear on how I'm meant to respond to comments on this site, as I am used to my LiveJournal and all its instant gratification-y goodness. But, thank you to everyone who has left me reviews, which, as I am sure you know makes my heart beat faster and my mouth curl up at the ends.


	6. Chapter Six

**All Love Letters are from Draco to Harry.**

**Chapter Six**

o**O**o

**B**lame the excitement over the tragic break up or the fire whiskey you lot practically drowned yourselves in afterwards if you like, but you and I both know it isn't true. Ron needed to even the score between you to keep being your friend and you needed to let him. I was just a convenient way to settle up between friends. I don't think he even really wanted me, but he definitely got off on watching you while he did it.

He was hard the entire time, rubbing himself off on my arse while he looked at you. I was looking at you, too, watching you lying there in your bed, pretending to sleep, but you know that. You never took your eyes off me writhing around on Ron's tatty sheets. We left the curtains open just for you, though I doubt you could see all the way over to his bed with all that water in your eyes. I think watching you have a wank with the same rhythm as his hand on my cock may be the single most perfect moment of my life. You looked like you were in pain.

I wanted you to hurt like I do, to feel even just a taste of what feeling you fuck the Mudblood every bloody night did to me. I didn't try to stop the sounds falling from my mouth, the better for you to hear every moan you've ripped from me with her body. I could hear you, too, last night while you had one off while I fucked your best friend's fist. I heard it every time your breath hitched, every time you tried to suppress a groan and failed. I heard you moan my name when you came, and I heard you sniffling into your pillow after you turned away.

And if you heard me whisper your name when I spilled all over his hand, it wasn't because I love you. It was to make sure I had your complete attention, because you'll never see me come again.

o**O**o

**I** thought I hated you before, but that can't even compare to the way I feel right now. Do you enjoy putting me in my place? Obviously I'm evil and therefore a perfect sacrificial lamb on the altar of Prince Potter. But not Granger, no, couldn't have everyone thinking bad thoughts about your precious little Mudblood now. You made such a big fucking production about how you loved me, that it was true love like Romeo and Juliet, that they hate me for hurting you, and her for fucking you. And yet somehow she gets to come out of it smelling like roses, like she fucked you every night because you were her good friend, while I still get blamed every time you want to have a mood, your favourite scapegoat.

Two months you wouldn't speak to me, acknowledge that I was even alive. Two months! All we ever did was kiss once, and you had the whole school ready to lynch me for breaking your pathetic, fragile heart. You didn't eat, Potter. You didn't speak. You made everyone in the whole damn school hate me even more than they already did and then drove me insane. And now, after you fucked Granger every night for a month, she dumps you, publicly, and you're back to being best pals? What the fuck!

Is she so important to the Dumbledore-Potter side of the war that she can't be allowed to be tainted? She still holds your hand. She still sits with you in class and at dinner so close she's practically in your lap. You and Ron are thick as thieves with her again, as if nothing had ever happened, as if shagging her was just a normal thing between friends. You don't shag Ron when you're depressed.

But where am I left after all this? Somehow Jezebel turned back into a saint, there for you in your time of need, while I get blamed making you need her in the first place. I'm back to being the Death Eater who broke your heart, while you bravely carry on with your best friends at your side. And I am all alone.

o**O**o

**S**top looking at me, you great ponce. I can't take it. Talk to me or don't, but don't keep staring at me while you try to decide whether or not I'm worth the effort of opening your mouth. How long has it been since you spoke to me? That night in your dorm. Forever.

When I'm feeling ridiculous, I imagine that your looks are longing gazes meant to convey your soul to me. But it's nothing but a flight of foolish fancy to imagine that whatever feelings you had for me once remain, and Malfoys are never foolish. But, sometimes I wish for the fool's gold that is your affection.

I can still feel your body pressed against mine, my back at the wall, the ghost of rough lips on mine. It was only once, but it was enough to burn me. Why does this still torment me? What is it about you that sucks everyone around you into your orbit? I am a comet burning for you until I crash into you and die. Only the smallest embers of me remain in the aftermath of loving you.

I can't let you destroy me again. There is not enough of me left to be consumed by you. You would hunger for more and I would be left with nothing. And yet I want to, to give the last bits of myself as an offering, just to end the separation that I can endure no longer. Perhaps when I am away from you, away from the temptation of your form paraded in front of me every day, I will be able to break the pull of your eyes on mine, calling me back to you.

o**O**o

**A/N**: Okay, so Pixie Goddess says I'm meant to respond to comments here. So, as I am behind, I'll just get right to it.

**Chapter One:**

Thank you **Anna** and **Holy Snappers**!

**Chapter Two:**

**Anna**, Kleenex is always a good thing. **snowy-angst**, bitersweet is my favorite kind of chocolate. **Demonsblade**, speachless is a good thing. I thought about signing them, and then I tried it and I just didn't like it. I don't know why, but I just didn't. I decided to just mention that they are all from Draco at the top of each chapter. **Em**, thank you! **L.S.T.P**, thank you; I love writing Malfoy. **FadedInnocence**, chills huh? Yay! **theTigersFire**, you know when I started this in my LJ a few people wanted letters from Harry, too, but I think you'll see why there aren't any by the end. **Fueled-by-ramen**, angst is my middle name. Okay, it's really Abilene, but can you blame me for prefering angst? **princessgreta**, it's much better than my sad poetry, so this is as sad and poetic as you ever want to see me. **HandsOff**, god I love it when people swear in reviews! **midnightprowler**, I hope that most of your questions are answered by now, but if not drop me a line. I love long reviews and you made me all happy.

**Chapter Three**:

**Rae**, thank you, and by all means point any mistakes out. I've had my friends look it over for me, but I'm still waiting until I'm all finished to do a final beta. I'm glad the emotion comes off. **Sand3**, I'm all about vandalizing my angst-riddled high school, too. People forget what it's really like much too quickly. Possibly so that we won't be afraid to send our kids. **theTigersFire**, thank you! I love sad stories. **music-spirit**, yay! Thank you. **Sheree**, Harry's really not all that bad, it's just that this is all from Draco's POV, and Draco has issues like most people have lipsticks. I'll see what I can do about a happy ending. **midnightprowler**, he's got spunk, but no desire to be rejected, the kiss shows up in later chapters, five I think, and thank you for the happy making long review again. **Ally**, aw, you make me blush. Thank you.

**Chapter Four**:

**Anna**, I'd prefer not to die like that, but if myshoulder doesn't stop hurting I may take you up on the offer. **AloraBraken**, they will get together, but they never broke up because they weren't really together in the first place. Harry tried to kiss Draco, and Draco ran away, so Harry just gave up. **music-spirit**, thank you, and no worries. I've already written to chapter 13. , thank you, and I never know what to write in these things, either. **Pixie Goddess1**, I love it when things go clench! Thank you. **midnightprowler**, you leave the best reviews. Everybody turned against H/Hr because Harry had made such a production about the perfect Romeo and Juliet, starcrossed love he had for Draco that everyone felt like he was cheating on Draco. Otherwise there wouldn't have been a problem. And Ron doesn't care about comforting Draco, so much as have someone who feels as betrayed by H/Hr as he does. And there will be some romance, don't worry. **theTigersFire**, I love it when people get all teary. Thank you. **Rott**, I'm glad you feel guilty for pitying him. He'd hate that.

**Chapter Five**:

Anna, first you want to kill me and now you want to steal me, huh? Well, we like that here. Thank you. **Pixie Goddess1**, thank you so much. **theTigersFire**, tah-dah! Chapter Six, just for you.

Sooo, Sunday night's not a good time to post, huh? I'll remember that...


	7. Chapter Seven

**Chapter Seven**

o**O**o

**H**ow is it that I can never make my body respond to you in a normal manner? You looked at me so long I thought I might die waiting for you to come to me. And then you did and I was happy, but it couldn't last longer than a single walk around the lake. My body has betrayed me again.

You were so close I could feel the heat of your body in the cold air. I've been walking for years with no problem, but with you there it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other without tripping on invisible obstacles, or stepping into unseen holes. Your arms wrapped around me for one perfect moment when you pulled me up from where I had fallen.

But then my head swam and water poured out my hands and the vertigo didn't subside until I shook you off. I wanted to hold your hand. It was swaying, open at your side, an invitation when your fingers brushed mine as we went along. But my palms were hot and damp and I shoved them in my pockets to keep them from giving me away.

You spoke to me like a friend, like someone whose company you enjoy. You smiled shyly and looked down at your feet and all I wanted was to kiss you. Your eyes are so beautiful, but I would drown if I looked too long. It felt like we walked forever, but it was over in a moment and you were gone back to your friends and your responsibilities and left my heart in the mud at the edge of the lake.

o**O**o

**I** will be better off without you when at home. There are no reminders that you ever possessed a part of me outside the grounds of Hogwarts. Once I am back in my room, with my things, I will be myself again. I won't crave the brush of your shoulder as you pass me in the halls, or the sound of your laughter piercing the din of a thousand voices at dinner.

I'll go back to resenting you for the privileges you enjoy without even noticing them. The heat of hatred and anger will replace the chill of missing you that has somehow filled my chest. Every morning I will remember my duty to my family and forget the sentimental ties with which you have bound me to the enemy.

And when I see you again, I won't ache to lock my eyes with yours, to crush my lips to yours, to feel for myself that you are still mine. All I need is time away from you to rid myself of this need to be near you. I will forget the mess you call hair that demands someone run their fingers through it. All I need is time.

o**O**o

**Y**our friends are writing to me. Why are your bloody friends writing to me? Shouldn't they be, oh, I don't know, saving the Wizarding World from people like me instead of trying to strike up a correspondence with me? And unlike some people, I was brought up with manners so I can't just ignore them as I really ought to be doing. It's like Death Eater Summer Camp here and I'm trading owls with Dumbledoree's minions every five minutes.

Someone is going to notice. It's only a matter of time. Practically everyone from Slytherin is camped out at my house right now. Pansy will notice for certain, though with Granger's verbosity even Crabbe and Goyle might notice. I think Blaise may have already. He keeps watching me, the suspicious little git. He's probably reporting to my father that I send love letters to the Mudblood every night. What a laugh.

Not you, though. You've never sent me a single letter. I don't even know what your handwriting looks like, and yet I could copy Granger's from memory. Weasley says you are fine, and that I needn't worry that you've been murdered in your sleep or had your hands cut off or been locked away in the cupboard under the stairs. As I have been assured that nothing untoward has befallen you to prevent your writing me, I can only assume that you simply do not wish to and leave it at that.

According to Granger, she and Weasley have been together all summer, and she has never been happier. I wonder where that leaves you. Shut up in the same house as your friends, but alone, none the less, while they shag the stuffing out of each other and you twiddle your thumbs. Well, turn about is fair play and Ron deserves to have it, no matter how put out you feel.

But I know how you hate to be alone. It's probably intolerable for you at this point, and I know you're with the Weasleys. Are you buggering one of the fuckwit twins, yet, or both, perhaps? More likely you've taken up with the little Weasley bitch. She always did want to lick your boots.

o**O**o

**A/N**: Most people get this by this point, but of course, not everyone even thinks about it since all we are getting is Draco's POV. Of course Harry wouldn't be intentionally cruel to Draco, but he has no idea what's going on in Draco's squirlly little head, as the boy hasn't been talking to him, or even sending him the letters. So all Harry knows is that Draco has rejected him. Several times. So don't kill him, yet.


	8. Chapter Eight

**Chapter Eight**

o**O**o

**I** do not miss you. I do not think about you when I should be thinking about other things. I do not dream about you at night. I do not feel phantoms of your fingers tracing my skin when I close my eyes. I do not ache in a thousand places you never touched me, nor does the skin burn where your fingers once brushed. I do not pine for the loss of your presence next to me, or the sound of your voice, or the way you look at me like I am the only thing in the world that matters.

I am not brutally aware that you love me only until you are able to find a suitable replacement, nor does it constrict something in my chest to think of you with whom ever it is that you have replaced me with this time, or for that matter, the last time. I am not terrified that you are so fickle that you have forgotten me now that you are not forced to see me every day. I am not afraid that you will never touch me again. I am not plagued by your memory.

I cannot remember a thousand things about the way you look, the exact ebony of your hair, the moss of your eyes, the chapped roughness of your lips, nor the pitch of your voice. I cannot recall every word you have ever spoken to me, not the words you said before "I love you," nor after, the words your silence held. I cannot feel your absence every moment of every hour of every day that you are not with me.

o**O**o

**T**he first time you said, "I love you," when we had first called our truce, when our fragile friendship first began, I told you not to. I told you it would be better for you to love a pretty little Gryffindor girl, like the Weasley girl you've taken up with, ironically enough, someone who wouldn't hurt you in the end. I only meant to remind you that I can be cruel, and that I cherished the friendship I had so long desired from you, and that I didn't want to destroy it.

You waited after that, for months, for some sign only you or Trawlany could possibly be fool enough to see. And then apparently you saw it, and you kissed me, and it was amazing. But then you asked me to go to Hogsmead with you, and told me you had something you wanted to say to me, and I just knew what you were going to say. I knew it and I tried to tell you not to say it. I did try, you know, to stop it, to warn you, to keep everything from changing so much we could never go back, to keep myself from hurting both of us.

But you wouldn't listen to me. You never listen to anyone. You always think you know better. You just think that if you rush in to things with your foolish Gryffindor courage and your Boy Who Lived luck that everything will be alright. You'd think you would have learned after that mess with Black, but then you never were terribly bright, and you've always underestimated me as a threat.

When you stopped me, put your hand on my arm and pulled me off the road into the trees and stood so close and held my hands and told me that you loved me, were you just too self involved to see the terror in my eyes or feel me trying to pull away? How could you have possibly thought it would all end happily ever after if you backed me into a corner like that? I never wanted you to say it, and you did it anyway. And what was I supposed to do with that?

I was nauseous and my chest hurt and I felt like you'd slapped me and I was going to fall over, so I lied. I told you that I hated you, that you were a bastard, and that I never wanted to see you again. I couldn't tell you the truth. I couldn't say that I loved you and I couldn't just stand there with you standing so close and say nothing and I didn't know what to do and it just came out. I'm sorry that I pushed you away. So sorry that I lied. I'm so sorry.

But it was your fault. Why did you have to go and ruin everything? I suppose it doesn't matter now. Apparently you've learned your lesson. According to your friends you aren't running around making loud proclamations of love to the Weaslette, though you are no doubt shagging her senseless.

Blaise never tells me he loves me. He touches me and I don't feel like I will die. He kisses me and nothing in my chest clenches so tight I think I might never breathe again. His smile doesn't make things muddle in my brain. He is my friend, and he can't hurt me.

o**O**o

**R**on tells me that you blew up your aunt last summer. I nearly died laughing the way he told it. You get into more trouble than a house full of Slytherins and you are still the Golden Boy. But you aren't the only one making mischief. We here at Death Eater Summer Camp can put up some competition.

Pansy, Blaise and I snuck into my Aunt Bella's room and sprinkled her sheets with a concoction made with powdered rhino horn or some such thing that Blaise's uncle thought he might have use for. I don't know why he thinks Blaise is in need of an aphrodisiac that would put a 300 year old mummy into heat, because let me tell you, he is doing just fine in that department. But he did, and we used it and now Aunt Bella is having spontaneous orgasms and can't keep herself standing up.

Uncle Rudolphus had a fit and called her a whore and now she's so desperate for sex she is flirting with the dementors. She's mental, that one. She's going to get herself kissed one of these days and with the way that cackling bitch lords her status over everyone around here, no one will be sending a patronus her way to save her.

o**O**o

**D**o you miss me at all? I miss your face. You have a hideous face, common and scarred and I miss it. Those terrible muggle glasses are so thick you could use them for watch glasses in potions, and yet, every face I see without them looks too vulnerable, somehow naked and vulgar. And your hair, atrocious, but the smooth hair of pretty, well kempt boys looks so girlish it makes me laugh.

Blaise has a perfect face. Generation after generation of pureblood breeding went into moulding his cheekbones and smoothing his unblemished skin. His lips are like silk, like a girl's, like mine. There are no calluses on his hands. His hair is dark as yours and it could be wild, but instead it curls into soft ringlets around my fingers when I kiss him. He is always groomed immaculately.

And I hate it all, his face, his hair, his lips.

You told me once that you loved my hair. You wanted to run your fingers through it. Is ginger hair as inviting as blond? Is her hair as mesmerizing as you once found mine? Or do you sit with her in the dark, running your fingers through it and imagining the corn-silk of her hair is the true silk of mine?

Do you prefer the soft swell of her breasts to the hardness of my chest? Hers are barely more than a little boy's chest, but mine is a man's now. The muscles in my body are like yours, long and hard from Quidditch. You could run your hands over your chest, and it would be like touching mine. You could do it when you are alone, and you could think of me, remember me, remember wanting to touch me like you touch yourself.

o**O**o

**A/N: **I just wanted to address quickly some concerns that seem to be overriding for many of you. First off, go ahead and hate Harry, he did hurt Draco, and he might have even meant some of it, not all of it, but some. It's very hard to have someone hurt you and not want to hurt them back. My point in saying that you should give Harry a chance is this: Draco hurt Harry first, and though it is childish to hurt someone because they hurt you, we all do it, or at least want to. Harry told Draco he loved him, to which Draco responded, "I hate you." Even a brave Gryffindor would be put off further attempts by something like that. Annnnyway. I still want Harry to hurt as much as Draco, and he does, but we don't get to see it because Draco can't see it.

Also, gah! Somehow behind again. I think this is longer than the chapter.

**Chapter One:**

**MistySpark**, thank you. Cute isn't my favorite adjective in the world, but I'll take it and keep it for when I don't' feel good, on my bedside table next to my adorable stuffed animals. **MysticWriter13**, would you like a tissue? I have the good kind with lotion and aloe in it and everything. Thank you. **dmweasley**, why thank you. **God-Damned**, yes, I promise it's going somewhere. Pinky swear.

**Chapter Two:**

**dmweasley**, giggle. **Xia**, we likes our tragedy, we do…what I meant to say is, yes, thank you. Tragic. Eh hem.

**Chapter Three**:

**MistySpark**, thank you! I know the chapters are short, but I update fast! No, really the thing is that I tried to group the letters in a logical way for the plot and that makes for shorter chapters because the plot moves much faster in letters than it would if I wrote out everything that happens. **L.S.T.P**, thank you! And hate Harry if you want! I should make buttons…hmm, something to think about. **dmweasley**, he is such a woobie!

**Chapter Four:**

**MistySpark**, nope, this is all from Draco's POV, so no letters from Harry. I hope that by the end you will get a sense of what Harry is thinking, because hopefully by then Draco will have his head out of his own arse enough to understand Harry a little better. **dmweasley**, it is kind of sad, isn't it? Ah, well, I do like to see them suffer. **Sand3**, I'm sorry. I didn't want to make you puke! And what's wrong with the Power Puff Girls! Hee. Thank you.

**Chapter Five:**

**MistySpark**, sweet, huh? I'm now deeply offended. Cute was one thing, but sweet! Can't you feel my angsty wrath raining down upon you? I may be force to retaliate with, with…fluffy bunnies or something equally heinous. **dmweasley**, thank you, again. Hee.

**Chapter Six:**

**NayNymic**, yeah, Harry is an asshole, and I hate him, too. He's a total slut puppy. If I didn't know what was going to happen and that he's going to suffer for it, it would ruin the story for me, too. Of course, I do know what's going to happen, so I have some compassion for him, too. **Ashes of Stars**, thank you, thank you. **Empress Kat**, Harry is a bastard, and Draco does need him, so even though Harry will get his comeuppance, I'm still keeping him around for Draco when they are ready. I do have a very good idea where this is going, and I think that everyone gets punished enough to make everyone happy. Thank you. **Anna**, you make me laugh, and I love that. **MistySpark**, ha! The sweet and cute comments have caught up with you! Mwahaha! Will make all future chapters three paragraphs long as punishment. **Ally**, thank you, and I did think about Draco angsting about the Dark Mark a bit more but his real objection to it is that Harry won't like it, not that he actually cares about the mark itself, so no angsting without Harry to care. **music-spirit**, hee, and me, of course. ;) **AloraBraken**, they are just dumb boys who have a distinct inability to communicate effectively anything besides, "Bugger off." Have fun on Spring Break! **dmweasley**, me, too, though he did kind of bring it on himself. Still, I do feel bad for him. **Sand3**, me, too, sister. Me, too.

**Chapter Seven:**

**theTigersFire**, do you really think he's going to give someone that kind of ammunition? Ha! Then he'd be all vulnerable, and stuff. And that's bad. I think. Yes, bad. **midnightprowler**, cheater! Hee. No. I totally agree with you about Draco, but Harry did manage to get a few of his own in and he probably did have the intention for at least a little of it to hurt. But yes, rejecting a boy as much as Draco does is rather mean. And given their past history, I just don't see Draco giving up the goods on the Dark Mark business without Harry actually point blank asking him. And about the bruises, Harry didn't know he was bruising Draco, because Draco always covered them up. And about the smut? Sadly not in this story, hence my ability to post it here. Hee. Sorry. But the stuff on my website is almost all of the smut variety. Of course it isn't of the HP variety, so there you go. Thank you for the long, lovely review! **NayNymic**, it is an unsatisfactory explanation, but hopefully by the end it will seem less like Harry is just a bastardy-bastard slutbag. **MistySpark**, yeah, no, not sending the letters, as that would give Harry entirely too much power over him, and having Draco's emotions on a stick already is more than Draco can really tolerate him having. Might be nice if he said _something_, but then they would live happily ever after and really where is the fun in that? **Pixie Goddess1**, you are cracking me up. Ferrity little brain. snicker Eh hem. **Fefs**, no, Draco isn't sending the letters, yes they only kissed the one time, and when Harry told Draco he loved him Draco said, "I hate you," and _then_ Harry stopped talking to him. Yes, they will be together, though I am not promising happily ever after at this juncture. Thank you! **Melenna**, I will post again soon, I will post again soon. Huh? What was I saying? **dmweasley**, can I interest you in a, "Fuck Harry, the Bastardy-bastard!" button? **SlytherinRomantic**, thank you, I'm pleased you like it. **Chaeli142**, uh, let me look…chapter nine, maybe? Yeah, I think chapter nine. Not promising that they will live happily ever after, though! **Self Inflicted**, feel free to ask, but I won't answer. Sorry. Thank you. And I never thought about Ron and Hermione writing making Draco more sympathetic, but I'm glad that it does. Ashes of Stars, all in good time! Well, maybe that's stretching it a little. Can you wait for chapter nine? **AloraBraken**, yes ma'am. **Snuffles**, thank you so much, and no. He's not that stupid. Or smart. Either way, no. **ThrouMyEyes**, I love how you say JUST, because, still? Cold-hearted boy. And it would be really mean and weird for Harry to act the way that he does if he was getting the letters, but sadly, he is not. And I'll think about mentioning it, but it does come out later, so I only mentioned it now because reading it as a WiP makes it a bit more urgent to know that. And thank you. **FadedInnocence**, thank you. And I shall update now, as I don't want any death due to withdrawal on my hands. **Ally**, I think I can oblige you on both counts. And I so wish I was drunk on wine, too, right about now. My head is killing me! **Anna**, caught that, did you? Thank you. And no, I have no life. Hee. Actually, yes, but I update fast because I've already written up to chapter 13. **Sand3**, eep! Again with the sickness! It's probably that it hits too close, because I am definitely not that good. But it would be nice if I was… hee. A girl can dream.


	9. Chapter Nine

**Chapter Nine**

o**O**o

**H**ow can you sit there and smile at me like you are my friend, like you and I share a private joke with that bloody twinkle in your eye and your arm around that girl who hates me? I am not your friend, not now, maybe not ever. All I wanted for so long was for you to take away the constant ache in my chest, to fill the emptiness inside me, or merely to make me forget.

But instead you ignored me. Not hard to do when you are so many miles apart that there is nothing left to remind you of me, but I felt the lack of your regard none the less. I could feel your indifference through a hundred miles and more, not hatred or anger, but something worse, more horrible. You had got over me.

Nothing in my life prepared me for the desolation I felt every time I opened a letter from one of your friends telling me how happy you were now, how you seemed more yourself than you had in a year. I doubt that in their miserable Gryffindor way that they meant this to hurt me, most likely they thought it would make me happy to know that you were happy. Because to them, love is wanting happiness for another more than you want it for yourself.

But I'm not a Gryffindor, and that isn't what love is to me. I am a Slytherin, and my love is selfish. I need to see you happy with my own eyes, I need to know that I had something to do with it, and above all I need you to love me, too. It's selfish, so selfish, but I would rather see you aching for me across the room than know that you are happy somewhere else. I'd rather see pain and longing and desperation in your eyes than see you move on and be happy without me. I'd rather you hate me than simply not care one way or another that I am alive.

o**O**o

**W**hy the fuck are you being nice to Blaise? Have you ever, in your entire life, even spoken to him before? And for that matter, why are you even speaking to _me_, when you couldn't be bothered to acknowledge that I existed all this time?

If you were jealous you would be hexing him or sneering at him the way that your precious Weaslette does to me, the way I want to do to her. Instead, you are more polite than even the best breeding and manners, of which you have neither, dictate; you go out of your way to be kind to him. You talk to him about me as if I am just a convenient way to bond with your new best pal, talking about my moodiness and my vanity and my bite like old school chums reminiscing over an old professor.

You must be trying to drive me mad. How can you talk about how beautiful my hair is with Blaise like I am not even there? How can it not rip your heart into a thousand little pieces every time you see me, the way I feel when I am only just in the same room as you? I never tormented you this way.

I only hope you aren't expecting me to be nice to the Weaslette after what she did to me on the train.

o**O**o

**T**here is grass in my hair and a rash on my arse. A latticework of bruises covers my body and I ache every time the fabric of my robes brushes against my skin. Every breath moves some part of me that hurts and reminds me of when last I saw you. I feel as if everything I am was burned away and all that is left is the part of me that loves you.

When can I see you again? My friends hate me and I look like I should be in hospital and I cannot even begin to make myself care about anything but the next time you press your mouth to mine, touch your hands to my body, dangle your hair in my eyes. I should shake you and scream at you and demand you explain to me why you didn't throw me to the ground and show me that this is what it was like instead of looking at me across the Hall with a thousand bodies between us for months, but I'll forgive you if only you will do it again.

It's been hours since you left me and my body craves you already.

o**O**o

**A/N:** Now, see, I got them together, just like you've been waiting for me to do. Aren't you happy? What? This doesn't explain a thing and you aren't sure what happened at all? Tough. Be more specific next time. Ah, well, the fun of Death Eater Summer Camp couldn't last forever.

**Chapter Eight Reviews**

**theTigersFire**, thank you, and it's a pity he can't see that. **Ashes of Stars**, thank you. Wonder how long it will take to answer the new questions. Hmm. Chapter Thirteen, I believe. **Ally**, I actually prefer the cherry things, thank you. And don't you worry, Draco gets punished more, and Harry remains self-absorbed and useless in general. **Sand3**, I'm glad you are feeling better. I love the Bella potion part, too. It can't _all_ be angst. And don't talk to me about stupid hair in high school. I had green bangs. 'Nuff said. **Chaeli142**, yep, yep, squirrelly, that's my boy. **Malfoy's Kitten**, thank you so much. **Lady Slone of Snow Mt**, Death Eater Summer Camp is my favorite part of the whole thing, really. Hee. But the boys are sweet in a twisted, fucked up kind of way, too. So cute, they are. I could just pinch their little cheaks. But I won't, because I'm not stupid or anything. **Pixie Goddess1**, heh, me too. We can be sad together. Thank you, and I'll try and string it out a little just for you. **thedarkside45**, I'm sorry you have to deal with loving the wrong person. That sucks. But I'm glad that it isn't still personal for you, because, twisted much? Yeah, anyway. Thank you, and I'm also glad you didn't throw up. **mydogisfudge**, thank you. No Harry POV coming to a theater near you, though. You'll just have to wait for the end. **MistySpark**, thank you, and good on the no more fuzzy bunny words. I'm all tough, and stuff. Yeah, that's it. Just, you know, don't tell my stuffed animals or they may revolt.


	10. Chapter Ten

**Chapter Ten**

o**O**o

**G**ods, your mouth, your wonderful, wicked, horrible mouth. It isn't beautiful or perfect and you ruin it when you suck your lip, but even then, hidden talents lie within. There is nothing in this world that I desire so much as to have your mouth on mine, or on my neck, my chest, my skin, my cock. You hurt me with it, score my skin with your teeth and I love it.

A purple bruise the size of a bludger on my left thigh throbs every time I touch it, and I can't stop myself. I sit in class and listen to the drone of professors I cannot stand and finger it through my robes. There are angry red marks in the centre of it where your teeth sunk into my flesh and sucked it while I whimpered, while I moaned, while I screamed and your fingers wrapped round me and I died. Your kiss revived me, and I have the memory of it written on my skin.

Last night I stared at myself in the mirror for an hour after you left me, looking at the evidence that this is real, that you were there, that you want me still. Every place you touch leaves a mark on me, and only I can see it. The glamour hides it from prying eyes to keep our secret, but I can see it still, feel every scratch and bruise and bite when I move.

All I have to do is touch myself where you touched me and I know that you want me, need me, crave me the way I crave you. The pain reminds me.

o**O**o

**I**'m in love with you. I'm in love with you and I haven't told a soul, not even you. But then, who would I tell? Blaise is out of the question, obviously, and certainly not any of the other Slytherins. They don't even know we're together. No one does, really. No one but Blaise, who watches me like a hawk, sees the bruises on my body he knows he never left. Not even your friends know, so I can't tell them now, can I?

But I am, in love with you, I mean. I know I never say it, and neither do you, but I feel it. I feel it burning through my veins and skittering across my skin like a curse. I want you and I need you and I can't quite breathe when my eyes meet yours. It seems to me that I am so obvious that the whole world must know the second they look at me, but they don't. No one knows but me.

I want to climb up onto the table in the middle of the Great Hall and shout. I want to cover your forehead with tattoos of my name for everyone to see. I want to make love to you in my bed, not rut around in the grass or on some dusty floor. I want you to be mine, as I am most embarrassingly yours.

But I can't. I can't have any of that because of some unspoken rule between us, some pact of secrecy to keep us safe enough to give the little of ourselves we do to a person we can never trust. You don't love me back, and I don't trust you not to break me the way I broke you. You don't trust me because I didn't first, didn't trust you enough to tell the truth, didn't trust you enough to let you know how I feel, didn't trust you enough to let you touch me.

And so we are safe, we two who meet in the dead of night to kiss and caress and suck and bite and grind and lick and touch and moan and die in each others' arms. So safe in the dark we can even open our eyes while we grope and never see the fear reflected in them. I am free to love you as long as nobody ever knows but me, and you are free to take from me what you want.

o**O**o

**Y**ou are so ravenous for affection that you are never full. Nothing I could ever do could fill your need, the bottomless pit of your desire to be loved not for part of yourself, but for all of you. My kisses rained on you like a typhoon would never drown you; you would simply soak them up like land parched with drought. That I love you is not enough, never enough and I could flood the Earth with it and you would still want the moon.

What is it that you want from me, need for me to give you to know the truth of it, that I love you and I always will? You say you like things the way they are, and in the same breath lament that I leave you too soon, that I do not come to you enough, that the nights we are together can never make up for the days we are apart. You do not say that you love me, but your words are all designed to manipulate me into saying it to you.

I am a Slytherin, _and_ a Malfoy, and I have never had even a fraction of your arrogance nor your insecurities. For that matter, I have never had even a glimmer of the power you so blithely, casually display, and your inability to even notice that you do infuriates me. Don't you know that I am just like everyone else? Don't you know I have worshipped you from the day we met? Can't you feel it in my touch, see it in my eyes, hear it in my moans, my pleas for more of you? Do you know me so little that you do not know I love you?


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Chapter Eleven**

o**O**o

**T**hat went so much better and so much worse than I ever imagined. I thought, stupidly, that if I said it, if I gave you a chance to throw it in my face like I threw it in yours, that you would. But you're not like me, are you? You never were. You would never do something just to hurt me. Not that you've never hurt me, just, I don't think it was intentional, which is sometimes worse. I couldn't let myself hope that you loved me too, because I'm simply not strong enough to survive having that hope crushed.

But something flickered to life in your eyes when I said it, something that has been missing so long I had forgotten it had ever been there to miss. You looked happy. No, it was more than that. Perhaps it was joy. I don't know. It was too many things: happiness, joy, glee, triumph, fire, passion, lust, all at once and then you were so close to me you looked like you had only one eye, and nothing, nothing, nothing mattered in that moment except that I loved you and you loved me.

I might have cried, but I don't do that, and besides there was the lust which overrode my better judgement. Suddenly I wasn't afraid, because you would never hurt me, you loved me, and it seemed like just the perfect time to have you inside me for the first time. And your hands on me, in me, over me felt so good, and your mouth on my throat and I just wanted more. I wanted it like a thirsty man in the desert wants water.

And you gave it to me. Just what I asked for. More. I have always imagined it perfectly, how good it would feel, how romantic it would be. I knew it would steal my breath away, because it would be you. And it did. But never in all the times I imagined it did I imagine it happening on a dirty floor, or that it would hurt so much, that it would feel like I was tearing inside, that it would burn like a poker hot from the fire had been shoved up inside me. I was completely incapable of breathing.

But you were so happy. I didn't want to take that away from you again, so I didn't say anything. I would be fine, and there was no need for you to ever know. But I buggered it all up, and when you touched me I flinched, just like before. I would never have let you light up the room if I had known that the glamour had flickered out while I tried to ward off the pain. But it was too late when I finally realized the bruises weren't the only thing I had covered. I never, never wanted you to see that, to look at me that way.

o**O**o

**I** didn't see you today. I mean, I'm not a girl. I didn't expect you to send me flowers or something. We don't have any classes together today, and we must have missed each other at dinner. There's not a reason in the world that we'd run into each other today just walking through the halls. We have been spending a lot of time together. You probably just have work to catch up on. Granger must have you locked away in some little study room somewhere making sure you don't flunk your N.E.W.T.S.

But it would have been nice to see you, just hear your voice or see you smile. I've been thinking about you all day. I can't quite seem to focus on anything, and there is a horrible smile making itself at home on my face. The Slytherins will all think I've gone soft if I keep this up. I may have to clean out Ron's brothers and rain havoc on the first year Gryffindors, and it'll be all your fault. You can make it up to me with my birthday gift.

o**O**o

**I**t's been three days. I am calm. I am not freaking out. I've been gone longer than that and you never missed me. Maybe you haven't noticed. You've never been quick on the uptake unless there was something reckless and ill advised involved, and being in the same room with me for five fucking minutes wouldn't be either right about now. In fact an owl with a bloody sonnet wouldn't be ill advised right about now.

I'm still pretty. The glamour is back on and my skin is pristine again. You needn't worry about any marks lingering underneath, as quite frankly, I don't want any of them. As far as you or anyone else is concerned, my neck and my chest and my belly and my arse and my arms are quite as white as the day I was born.

I'm sore and tired and I haven't slept. I can't sleep until I see you. Where are you? I've come to you ten thousand times, but I can't this time. I need you to come to me. I could find you, there simply aren't that many places you could be, but you know where I am and you aren't here with me.

I love you. I wasn't lying when I told you so. But I need to know you love me, too, that this wasn't all some charade to get you laid. Your regret might tear my heart into ten thousand pieces, one for every time I came to you, and yet I want it.

I want your regret, or your glee, your anger, or your comfort. The burning in my arse is nothing to the ache in my chest, the wild palpitations of my heart in that moment just before I think I will see you. I need you.

o**O**o

**A/N**: Thank you to everyone who has reviewed. Makes me all happy.

**Chapter Nine**

**Melenna,** I know I'm a tease, but a girl can't deny who she really is deep down inside. I just happen to be a bitchy tease deep down inside. **Chaeli.meep**., Hey, he's bruised in a good way, so don't feel too bad for him. **Ashes of Stars,** patience woman, patience! **Ally**, mmm, cherries. I love to watch a good axe murder chase scene, don't you?

**Chapter Ten**

**Ally**, yep. Harry knows. The glamour came off. Of course that would be evident if you read _this_ chapter. I'm going to bed now. **Anna**, giggle you make me laugh so much. I love a good angst whore. **Opal Portia**, fuck yeah! Thank you. **Crowley Black**, thank you very much. **thedarkside45**, I'm glad you have a good man these days. A good man makes up for a bad job, a bad haircut, and bad shoes. Not that I have any of those. Hee. Thank you. **theTigersFire**, tragically, no. And I had had just that same thought for the ending. **Hoshiko-Malfoy, **O-K-A-Y **AloraBraken**, he still loves Draco, he just doesn't say, and he doesn't mean to hurt him, they're just, you know, passionate. Am I the only one still sporting bruises and hickies after sex? **Melenna**, close, soo very, very close. Thank you. **Pixie Goddess1**, thank you very much. I'm all about the not actually poetry poetry. My real poetry? Sucks ass. **Ashes of Stars**, not until the end. And don't beat Harry too much or he'll start to like it and then how will I keep him in line? **Chaeli.meep**., of course Harry loves him. I'm all about the tragic star-crossed love. Which is not so much star-crossed love without the love. He's just waiting for Draco to say it first because he's not sure if it's okay with Draco for him to say it at all.


	12. Chapter Twelve

**Chapter Twelve**

o**O**o

**Y**ou said everything was fine. You said everything was okay. You said you loved me and that you weren't angry. You told me I was that I was _overreacting_, you bloody bastard, and then you flinched when I touched your arm and you blew me off. Is this some kind of sick revenge for all the times I wouldn't let you touch me!

I hate you. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, and more importantly, I hate you. I can still feel your fingers on my skin, and I can't stop craving the feel of yours under mine. I've spent all of ten minutes with you in the last two weeks and I am going mad for want of you. Where are you and why haven't you dragged me into a closet and had your wicked way with me by now?

The answer is simple, but I find that I do not have it in me to admit it. You never loved me, or you never forgave me, but either way you are a liar and a cad and I hate you. You break my heart a little more every minute that passes that you do not come to me and hold me and kiss me within an inch of my life. Please love me. Please come back to me. Please don't leave me like this.

o**O**o

**I** don't know what to do. You have to tell me what to do, because I simply do not understand. You say you love me. You want me, but you won't touch me. I know you want me. I can feel it, not just in some twitter-pated, love sick, could-be-nausea-but-I-choose-to-interpret-it-as-excitement, touchy-feely, Hufflepuff kind of way, but in an 'I can feel your erection pressing against your pants if I brush into you in a pathetic and desperate plea for contact' kind of a way. You've cum down my throat, sucked me, fucked me, stroked me off in a public place, bruised my body and my ego, messed up my hair, and kissed me breathless, and now you won't even hug me! You won't even hold my hand, not that I want such a disgusting public display of affection in the first place.

You didn't want every tabloid-reading freak in the Wizarding World to know about us. Fine. I don't want that either. You thought it would be best if the Death Eaters did not become aware of our relationship. Well, I want that even less than you do since I have to live with them and all, so I don't bloody well mind if the general population of the school remains in the dark for the rest of time and eternity. But Granger and Ron? What possible reason could you have for not telling them! At the time I bought your little 'Oh, Draco, it's so much more romantic if it's a secret' routine because I was blinded by the near constant orgasms. But now that there won't be any of that, and you never particularly wanted to be my friend in the first place, I am left with the truth of the matter. You didn't want anyone to know because you didn't want there to be any fuss when you were done with me.

Well, fuck you. I can't believe I fell for your love bollocks _again_. I admit it, I was completely fooled. Congratulations. You pulled the wool over the eyes of a Slytherin. You must be so proud. I never thought you had it in you, but apparently I underestimated you. You took what you wanted, all the while stringing the Weasel bitch along to make a proper match with when you were through with me. I bet she is picking out a china pattern right now while Ron, the bloody traitor, watches on with smiles from ear to ear now that Granger is officially the future Mrs. Weasley.

Fine then. I don't need you or your filthy friends. It's not like I need you. It's not like I can't imagine my life without you. It's not like the thought of never touching you again makes it hard for me to breathe. I'm sure the pain in my chest will go away any day now and has nothing at all to do with you, probably a bad potion or something. I was fine before all this nonsense with you, and I'll be fine after.

I love you, but I'll get over it.

o**O**o

**I**t was my birthday today. Obviously you knew that, already, or you wouldn't have sent a gift. I had completely forgotten. Blaise and Pansy made a party for me, but I don't really remember anything past opening the tiny little box wrapped in silver paper. There must have been cake or tea or more likely firewhisky since Blaise put it on, but I really can't recall. It was my birthday and you couldn't just leave me alone in peace, could you? I was fine. I hadn't thought about you in days, well, hours at least. The place in my chest where you ripped my heart out was scabbing over nicely and pleasantly numb, but you couldn't have that. No.

A ring. You sent me a ring. Was it some kind of sick parting gift? Are you still trying to drive me mad? Why would you send me something like that? I know you aren't trying to reconcile with me as you haven't so much as looked at me since that last day we spent alone, not touching. You act as if I am simply part of the background, as if I somehow have the same relevance to your life as a table or a tapestry or one of the nameless hordes of Potter worshippers you can't be bothered with. And then you send me this. Do you even know what the runes etched into the metal mean? How could you send me a promise to love me forever not a week after you discarded me? Why are you doing this to me?

Can't you just let me go?

o**O**o

**A/N:** I know this is a lame excuse, but I don't have time to respond to your comments today, but I love allof them. Thank you!


	13. Chapter Thirteen

**Chapter Thirteen**

o**O**o

**M**y skin is white as the day I was born now, flawless once again, not a single trace of you still written on my body. No bruise remains where your teeth once bit into me, where you sucked my pulse into your mouth, coaxed the blood away from my heart and into my skin, though it sorely wanted to go elsewhere. There is not a scratch left on my body where your fingers dug into me, where your ragged nails raked across my back or bit into the flesh of my arse to get me just a fraction closer. The rash on the skin of my thigh from your unshaven cheek was the first mark to disappear. And now they are all gone, all but the mark that drove you away from me.

The glamour I put on every night before I go to bed now does not cover the evidence of our passion as it once did, but rather counterfeits it. I sit for hours in front of a mirror trying to capture the exact impression your teeth would leave on my throat, the exact red with hints of purple the depressions would be and the inverse purple mottled with red the bruise around it would be when you had just taken your mouth away, much to the horror of the mirror. But it didn't matter. I could never get it right, because what I remember isn't the marks I covered up, but the feeling they gave me, the little shock of pain, the reminder of you every time I turned my neck.

And yet, I can't stop trying. I need to see myself the way you saw me right after that last soul searing kiss before we had to go our separate ways for the night all those nights we were together that seem so long ago and nothing more than a happy dream. I ache because, like a dream, it seems the longer I am awake the harder it is to recall the exact details, melting all into vague impressions and half memories.

Are there flecks of gold in with the green of your eyes? I can't quite recall. And even if I could bring myself to look again to see for myself, you would never let me close enough to see the gold in your tie, let alone your eyes. You haven't looked my way in so long I can no longer bear to look in yours. I cannot watch you move on where I cannot, forget while I cannot, be happy where I cannot.

All I have left to prove to myself that there was once an us, not a me longing for you and you happy without me, is the ring you sent. That horrible, wonderful ring that I have never even worn. I've held it in my hand a thousand times, rubbed it between my fingers in the pocket of my robes during class to ward off the cold truth of your indifference, pressed it to my lips every night before I go to sleep because I can no longer kiss you. But it doesn't matter now. My father calls me home, and I have not the strength, nor the incentive to fight him. I can't take your ring with me where I am going and that is the worst torture I can imagine, because it really will leave me with nothing.

All I can hope is that when you get it, you will hold on to it and remember that you once loved me, and that you won't toss it in the bin as casually as you tossed me.

o**O**o

**I**t is easier to forget you here where I don't have to see you every day, or be constantly confronted by memories of you. I have gone almost an entire day without a sharp pain in my chest reminding me that you don't want me anymore. The Death Eaters are training us in earnest now and they take up all my days with it. I work hard because I know that when they are done with me, when they finally let me go to bed, I will stay awake all night thinking of you if I am not so exhausted my body drops into sleep the moment my head hits the pillow.

I don't miss you while I am learning curses that make even my stomach turn. I don't miss you while I am fending off the attacks of my peers. And I don't miss you while I'm locked away in a potions lab that has never been graced with your incompetent fumbling. The ache in my muscles at the end of the day sometimes eclipses the ache of my yearning for you. Sometimes. Sometimes I can even forget you long enough to laugh with my friends at dinner, or get up to some mischief with them in the few hours we are left to ourselves.

But at night, gods, at night those terrible nights when sleep eludes me, I see your face on the back of my eyelids from that night, that first night we were together. Your mouth, as always was chapped and rough, and your eyes had this luminous quality out there in the dark. You loved me then, I know you did. But I can never see that look on your face long enough. As soon as I start to feel, remember that you loved me, the picture changes and all I can see is that look of horror on your face the night I told you I loved you and you saw the mark on my arm. I don't want to think about you that way anymore, either way. It is driving me mad.

It is easier to hate you here, too. Everyone hates you here, not just me in my more petty moments. I hate you for hurting me; it makes me feel foolish that I trusted you enough to make that even possible. I hate that you get to be the hero, while I am ever the villain, even though you were the one who used me, broke my heart and discarded me for something I had no control of, something you could have saved me from if you were truly the hero everyone makes you out to be. I hate you for not trusting me when I was willing to stay with you, for you, fight next to you, even die for you.

And so now I am here, a million miles from where I wish I was, but am glad I am not, missing you and hating you in equal measures.

o**O**o

**I** was thinking about you last night. Again. It seems that I cannot stop thinking of you, no matter how much I want to forget you. Forgetting anything about you is impossible, though, and I should have known that, but I needed to believe I could get over you. I wish I could get over you. I wish I didn't think about you constantly whenever my mind isn't specifically occupied by something else. But I wanted to remember last night. Some memories of you are worth keeping, even if they do chain me to you in a way I doubt I shall ever escape.

I was remembering the first time we were together, that night in the graveyard. Do you remember that night? The term had just started and you were driving me crazy, talking to me like nothing had happened, like we were friends and you hadn't ignored me all summer to be with your girlfriend the Weaslette. You were even being nice to Blaise, which was wrong on so many levels I can scarcely count them. But that night the Weasley bitch was nowhere to be found, and neither was Blaise, or anybody else for that matter. Actually, they probably would have been easy to find if we had wanted to see anyone else, but we didn't so we just started walking to get away from everyone and everything, because being alone in a room with you was too confining.

So we walked. We walked and walked until there was no castle left and we were on the grounds and we tried the Quidditch pitch, but it didn't feel right, and so we kept walking right on by it until we came to the graveyard and then we just stopped. I don't know why we stopped there, but we did. We sat in between two headstones, the grass was damp, and the air was warm and humid and you could still smell the rain from that evening, but we didn't care. You sat in front of me, facing me, but not touching, your legs crossed under you so adorably.

I wanted you to kiss me again, like you had that day in the hall, but you didn't. You just sat there and talked to me and got imperceptibly closer to me every minute that passed with us staring into each other's eyes, not touching. Would you ever have kissed me? If I had waited for you to make the first move, would we still be out there sitting on someone's grave and aching with the longing to touch? Probably. Hard to blame you for that when it always went so well when you made your move in the past.

The little black kitten bounded out of the darkness at us like it was being chased, but it nothing came after it. His little body was all gawky and he clearly hadn't grown into it just yet, but there was something entrancing about it as it circled me. I felt like prey, which is not something I usually like, but it amused me that I was being stalked by tiny creature, and gave me something to look at besides your eyes. He kept circling me and rubbing up against my knee and making the most pitiful yowling sound I have ever heard, and I had no idea what he wanted.

"He wants you to touch him," you told me, and the kitten meowed in agreement and started pawing at my lap.

I told you that I couldn't, that it would scare him away, and that I rather liked him and didn't want him to go. You leaned forward and pet the kitten, your hand nearly brushing my thigh as you stroked its little head. My chest clenched up and my hands started to sweat and I wasn't sure if we were talking about the kitten anymore, and you were so close, I didn't remember you being that close. I could barely breathe.

And then you looked up from my lap into my eyes and said, "He'll think you don't want him if you never touch him."

Something in my chest burst and warm liquid oozed all over my insides and for a moment I was brave and I brushed my hand against yours on the kitten, and leaned in and kissed you all at once. I don't know if the kitten was purring or if it was me, but it was the best thing I had ever felt before. My whole body felt like hot and rubbery, except my lips and my mouth on yours, and I thought if it never stopped it would be too soon. But it didn't stop. We kissed and kissed and kissed for what seemed like forever and then somehow we were lying in the grass and you were on top of me and pushing my robes away and touching my skin and making me shake all over.

You weren't the first to touch me there, but it felt like it, like you were the first and you'd be the last and I wanted it that way. And then your mouth was on me and I knew you'd be the last because I was going to die right then and they wouldn't even have to move my body because we were already in the graveyard. Every part of me was throbbing in time with your mouth on my cock and I was moaning wantonly and then I was screaming and coming down your throat and you were kissing me again.

All I could think was that I needed to touch your skin, so I started rucking up your shirt and running my hands over your belly and then biting your nipples. You were hard and grinding into me and biting my throat and snarling and perfect. Every time you ground yourself against my thigh your belly brushed my cock and I was getting hard again and you were moaning my name between bites and then your hand was on me and stroking and I screamed again and we both came and then collapsed in the wet grass. The kitten purred somewhere near my head and started playing with our hair. You said he was your familiar. He followed us all the way to the rickety iron gate, but never left the graveyard.

I was remembering that night and I was touching myself because you were not there to do it for me this time, and I was moaning and I forgot the silencing charm. Blaise came into my room about the time that my cock went into your mouth and I couldn't stop. I knew he was there in the room, watching me do it, but I couldn't stop, and when he crawled onto the bed and swallowed me whole I screamed for him the way I screamed for you, and I couldn't stop myself. You haven't touched me in so long, and he was there with his mouth and his hands and his cock and I couldn't say no, even if I wanted to.

o**O**o

**B**laise says he loves me. It doesn't feel as threatening when _he_ says it. He never used to say it, not last summer when we were carrying on, not after we got back to school and I dropped him for you without even a word, not when you left me and I was alone and miserable. But he says it now. He tells me he loves me every night when he climbs into my bed and kisses me all over and I'm lonely here where I can't even see your face accidentally during dinner, and so I let him. I let him do what he wants, let him use my body and call it making love, but more pathetically, I let him hold me and caress me when he's done, let him stay the night in my bed. All the things I never let you do. It doesn't matter anymore.

If I'm lucky I'll die young and never have to see you look through me as if I'm not there ever again, and if I'm not, then I'll get to see you over the point of your wand. I don't care either way. I don't care about anything any more. I'm a complete failure as a Death Eater, and I don't care. I can't even get up the will to curse anyone. You have to mean it, you know. And I don't, because I don't care enough to hate, not even you. I don't hate you anymore, but I don't love you anymore either. I don't feel anything, and I don't want to ever again. Everything hurts too much if you let yourself care, and I've had enough of hurting for a lifetime.

o**O**o

**A/N:** I'm sorry this took so long. I hurt my shoulder and couldn't type very well for a while. Thank you to everyone who left a review!


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